Meat-free bacon start-up Hooray Foods secures additional seed funds

Hooray Foods' new financing takes the US start-up's funding to date to US$4m.

 

Meat-free bacon start-up Hooray Foods in San Francisco has secured additional seed financing to scale up production.

The US$2m investment was led by New York-based venture-capital fund Evolution VC Partners, whose founder and CEO Gregg Smith will join the Hooray Foods’ board of directors. It was joined in the round by Gaingels, an investor also located in New York, and Sand Hill Angels, a group of angel investors in Silicon Valley. The investment split was not disclosed.

Hooray Foods was founded by Sri Artham in 2019 and secured its first major retail listing last November, with its products now stocked in more than 300 Whole Foods Market stores in the US. The business won seed funding in 2020 from plant-based investor Stray Dog Capital, US venture fund that also contributed to the company’s pre-seed financing in 2019.

The Glasswall Syndicate, a group of venture capitalists, foundations, trusts, non-profit organisations and individual investors in Kansas City, also participated in that round. Glasswall is managed by Stray Dog Capital’s Macy Marriott.

Announcing the additional seed finance, Hooray Foods said it has now received about $4m in total funding.

It will use some of the latest cash round to “improve” its plant-based bacon, which is produced using “proprietary fat encapsulation techniques”. Ingredients include coconut oil, rice flour, tapioca starch, umami seasoning, maple syrup, salt and beet juice concentrate. The products are allergen-free and are free-from soy, nitrites and hormones.